Reproductive
health care could be the sticking point during consolidation
talks between religious and secular hospitals

In light of the Berger Commission’s recommendations for restructuring
New York state’s hospital system, several reproductive-rights
advocacy groups are wondering whether the proposed consolidation
of four religiously affiliated hospitals with their nonsectarian
counterparts will result in a step backward for women’s health
care.

“It
is of the utmost importance to the reproductive justice and
reproductive freedom of all the females in this country to
keep the two trains on different tracks,” said Barbara Morrissey,
president of the Albany-area chapter of the National Organization
of Woman, of the need to maintain a separation between institutions
with religious affiliations and those without.

The Berger Commission’s recommendations will affect the communities
of Elmira, Kingston, Niagara Falls and Schenectady, where
the commission identified Ellis and St. Clare’s hospitals
for unification. The plan to combine Ellis and St. Clare’s
comes as a double slap in the face to women’s health care,
some say, because the Berger Commission issued the recommendation
simultaneously with a proposal to close Bellevue Women’s Hospital
in Niskayuna, one of only two exclusively women’s facilities
in the nation.

JoAnn Smith, president of Family Planning Advocates of New
York State, said that while she recognizes the need for hospital
mergers, consolidations must occur under circumstances that
will preserve progressive reproductive policy. She suggested
it is possible for a religious and nonsectarian hospital to
merge under terms that protect women’s health care, but said
she is concerned that such conditions may not play out in
the four cases outlined by the Berger Commission.

In its recommendation for the merger of the two hospitals
in Kingston, the commission report suggests that the two should
form a single governing structure and move reproductive services
to a “proximate” location. The report further suggests that
this model could become a prototype for other mergers between
religious and secular facilities.

Had the consolidation recommendation stopped at calling for
a unified governing body, Smith said she happily would have
accepted the terms, but calling for moving women’s services
to a “proximate” location crossed the line of reasonableness.

“Reproductive
health care is part of a woman’s health, and for a nonsectarian
hospital to agree to separate it, to move it away, to somehow
indicate that it isn’t part of a regular hospital system,
is just unacceptable,” Smith said. “It’s unacceptable to assume
that a woman’s reproductive life can be shuttled to a different
part of the equation. It’s not 1640. Women need to be treated
with respect.”

Smith wondered whether moving women’s health care to a “proximate”
location would mean all reproductive services would be required
to occur within that premises. In other words, for example,
would a doctor be able to provide counseling about a woman’s
changing birth-control needs when she’s undergoing chemotherapy,
or would a doctor be able to perform a tubal ligation for
a woman who requested the surgery occur during her cesarean
section?

According to David Sandman, executive director for the Berger
Commission, there’s no need for fears such as those expressed
by Smith because consolidation need only involve the unification
of each hospital’s governing structure. Each hospital would
maintain its own campus and identity. “To the average patient
on the street, there are still two distinct hospital campuses
and they have a choice of where to go,” he said.

Sandman said he’s familiar with the arguments reproductive-rights
organizations raise against the consolidations, but he disagreed
with their claims that the Berger Commission showed a disregard
for women’s health care in its report.

“When
you look at the specific merger that was recommended of Kingston
and Benedictine, the recommendation shows extraordinary sensitivity
and respect for the issue of women’s access to reproductive
services, which is an absolute condition of bringing together
Kingston and Benedictine hospitals,” Sandman said. “The fact
that we made absolutely explicit provisions and protections
for those services speaks for itself.”

Ceil Mack, a spokeswoman for St. Clare’s Hospital, said the
hospital is not currently answering questions regarding the
merger, and therefore declined to comment about whether consolidation
in Schenectady would use the Kingston model. She did provide
a statement issued jointly Dec. 5 by the chairmen of St. Clare’s
and Ellis hospitals, which announced that they have accepted
the recommendation of the Berger Commission.

Dennis Poust, director of communications for New York State
Catholic Conference, said he could not comment because the
mergers are currently considered individual diocese issues
and the Catholic Conference has yet to choose a unified position.

Ken Goldfarb, director of communications for the Diocese of
Albany, in which Schenectady County is included, said discussions
about the unification are occurring internally within St.
Clare’s and Ellis hospitals and that the diocese is waiting
to see what develops before commenting.

Smith also is anxious to see what terms St. Clare’s and Ellis
hospitals develop for their consolidation, but she maintained
that her worry about the future of women’s health care is
compounded by the Berger Commission’s an nouncement that Bellevue
Women’s Hospital must close.

“The
reason [Bellevue] has been important in our conversation is
because it’s like, ‘You’re closing the only women’s hospital
at the same time you’re putting restrictions on women’s health
care?’ What’s the pattern here? It doesn’t look good,” Smith
said. “So we’ve been trying to be supportive of Bellevue because
we think that they’ve given a really nice community service.
We will do whatever we can in this crisis to help them stay
afloat, but our main concern is that women’s health care doesn’t
disappear from the community.”

Despite the commission’s recommendation, Anne Saile, CEO of
Bellevue Women’s Hospital, has vowed that “Bellevue is here
to stay.” Supporters have rallied to keep the hospital from
shutting down by submitting comments to area politicians,
holding vigils outside the state Capitol and the hospital,
and so forth.

“I’m
steadfast against the closing of Bellevue,” Morrissey said.
“I feel that the Berger Commission report was simply based
upon only looking at a financial perspective as opposed to
looking at the uniqueness of this one institution, which is
extremely, extremely important to the woman who have had children
there, to women’s health in general, and to all the babies
who will be born there.”

—Nicole
Klaas

nklaas@metroland.net

What
a Week

Sacrifice
Begins in the Minority

Rensselaer
County Democrats announced this week the anticipated
layoffs in their minority office. The county budget
for 2007 leveled deep cuts across the board, and
the minority office, after losing nearly 40 percent
of its operating budget, appears to be the first
to feel it. The Republican majority claims that
the cuts were needed to keep an unpopular county-tax
hike down around 15 percent, but the Democrats
are crying foul, arguing that the majority Republicans
didn’t make the same staffing cuts to their own
offices. Legislator Kevin Harrington (D-District
2) suggested last month that the best way to keep
costs down might be to disband the county legislature
altogether. Not a bad idea.

Soul
Brother Number One Is Dead

What
can be said about the man who supplied the baby
boomers with a soundtrack for every stage of their
lives? James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, was
there during the civil-rights movement, through
the upheaval of Vietnam, right up into the ’80s,
when his music began cropping up in the opening
segment of every feel-good movie coming out of
Hollywood. He is hailed as one of the forerunners
of funk, and given credit for laying down the
groove for the early hip-hop scene. It seems impossible
at the moment to laud enough praise upon the popular
performer from South Carolina. After battling
with prostate cancer for years, the 73-year-old
Brown died of heart failure.

Soul
Brother Number Two Is Dead, Too

OK,
maybe the 38th president of the United States,
Gerald Ford, wasn’t a soul brother, but he was
No. 2 to one of the most notorious presidencies
in modern history. With only 48 hours notice of
Richard Nixon’s resignation, the lifelong politician
stepped into the Oval Office and into the middle
of a tumultuous time in American life. Ford presided
as commander in chief during the inevitable fall
of Saigon. He gave tacit permission—at Henry Kissinger’s
counsel—to Indonesian leader Mohammad Suharto’s
slaughter of nearly 200,000 East Timorese. After
his contentious pardoning of Nixon, Ford lost
his presidential bid to Jimmy Carter and left
politics and public life. He died peacefully at
the age of 93.